


Lay Down in the Tall Grass

by trill_gutterbug



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Obligatory Bastogne Fic, Oh you know, Pining, Sharing a foxhole, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 15:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19403140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/pseuds/trill_gutterbug
Summary: Eugene got his first purple heart after the jump into Holland. The jump went well. The landing… less so. He shows Heffron the scar on his calf one night, by the light of a crescent moon on the snow and the tiny smoking cherry of Babe’s cigarette.





	Lay Down in the Tall Grass

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song by Timber Timbre. 
> 
> _You tripped over my site  
>  And you dug me out  
> Of this shallow grave  
> With your Swiss Army knife._
> 
> -
> 
> Now listen, obviously I took drastic liberties with timelines and who got killed/wounded when and so forth, but the important thing is that I extensively researched all of that before choosing to say fuck it, so now I know just how wrong I am, and that knowledge will haunt me forever. Let’s say this is set some nebulous time post- _Bastogne_ , mid- _Breaking Point_?

Eugene got his first purple heart after the jump into Holland. The jump went well. The landing… less so. He shows Heffron the scar on his calf one night, by the light of a crescent moon on the snow and the tiny smoking cherry of Babe’s cigarette. 

Babe whistles, squinting. “Barbed wire did that?”

Eugene nods. He’s in the process of switching socks, stiff fingers working at his boot laces. “Five stitches.”

Heffron winces. His scarf is cinched up around his neck and head, leaving just a little gap for his eyes and mouth to perform the two most vital soldierly activities: scowling and smoking. “That’s a doozy. Hurt bad?”

Eugene smiles down at his shoes, balancing on one knee to keep his bare foot out of the icy mud at the bottom of the foxhole. “Nah, Babe, felt great.”

“Ah, wiseass.” Heffron nudges his shoulder. Eugene has to catch himself on the bank with the hand holding his dry sock. He shakes snow off it. “I didn’t even know you got hit.”

Eugene wedges his foot into the sock and jams it back in his boot. Too damn cold for anything to be bare, but his boot’s not much warmer. He sniffles. His nose hasn’t stopped running in weeks. “Didn’t get hit. Told you, I fell on a fence.”

Heffron makes a soft noise, dismissal and agreement at once. “Yeah, but... Well, you know.”

Eugene knots his laces. He looks up at Heffron. “Not really.” 

Babe eyes him overtop his half-burnt cigarette. He’s been nursing it all night, a puff or two at a time. It’s bent and dirty from being crammed into his pocket over and over. Eugene takes a slow, hungry breath of the smoke drifting between them. 

“Wounded is wounded,” Babe says at last. 

Eugene wiggles around until he can get his other leg out from under himself. He’s so cold his legs feel six miles away, held hostage by their own rusted joints. “It ain’t,” he says, but soft so Heffron can ignore it if he wants. Wounded is wounded alright, and wounded is taking fire from the enemy on the field of battle. Eugene’s never been that. 

Heffron doesn’t want to ignore it. “Got yourself a purple heart, didn’t ya?”

Eugene’s laces are frozen into a knot. He digs at them until his fingernails hurt. “I guess I did,” he says at last. He can’t feel what he’s doing, and he can’t see either. 

“Here.” Babe nudges his shoulder again, gentler this time. He passes Eugene the smouldering butt of the cigarette. “My hands are warmer.” 

It’s probably not true, but Eugene’s so grateful for the smoke he can’t protest. He puts the damp butt between his lips and takes a shallow drag as Babe reaches down between them. He doesn’t want to be rude and finish it off, but it’s the first cigarette he’s had in days. He’d thought the itch for it would kill him long before any German managed. Babe fiddles with the laces while Eugene looks out through the trees. They’re nearly twenty yards back from the line, which is the only reason he can imagine for Babe to take his eyes off the front, even with his rifle propped in easy reach. Eugene stares it, wondering if he’d be fast enough to grab it if he needed to. If a German popped up right there between those pines, aiming at them. Heffron’s hunched shoulders are between him and the rifle. Eugene thinks he’d sit petrified, like stone, waiting for Heffron to do it. Not with fear, but with disbelief. He’s never shot anyone. 

“I never shot anyone,” he says out loud. 

Heffron’s moving hands pause, just for a second. Eugene can’t see his face in the dark with his head ducked and his helmet in the way. Somewhere distant, a stick cracks, but Eugene thinks it’s just a branch falling, heavy with snow. 

“Yeah, no shit, Doc,” Babe says finally. “You’re a medic. You ain’t supposed to.” He gives Eugene’s laces a last yank, then sits up. “There.”

“Thanks.” Greedily, Eugene takes another drag off the cigarette before handing it back. There’s still a half inch left before the filter. “For both.”

Babe smiles. “Sure.”

Eugene switches out his second sock and tucks both the damp ones inside his coat, one over each shoulder. He winces. “Smell so fuckin’ bad,” he mumbles. He’s lucky to have two pairs to begin with.

Heffron laughs. “I've smelled worse just today.” 

Out ahead of them there’s a rise of voices, then a loud hushing noise. Martin, quieting the rowdy coop.

“Speaking of which,” Heffron goes on, “you take a look at Gonorrhea’s gonorrhea?”

Eugene smirks into the darkness. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s exactly the opposite. All of this, and men are still being felled by the most prosaic of things. Bacteria in the wrong place at the wrong time, life reduced to microscopic odds. “Not yet. Don’t have nothin’ to give him.”

“Maybe a gag, so he’ll shut the fuck up about it.”

Eugene shuffles around until he can tuck his hands under his armpits. “Yeah, maybe.” He glances sideways. It doesn’t look like Babe’s going to put that cigarette through a final furlough in his pocket. “Hey, can I have another drag?” 

Heffron takes the smoke from the corner of his mouth. “Finish it.” 

“Nah,” says Eugene, but he liberates one hand and cups the precious little butt to his lips, drawing on it until it’s right down to the edge of the filter. When he tries to hand it back, Babe shakes his head, so Eugene smokes until it’s all burned up.

~*~

It’s one of the replacements next, a blonde boy called Shindell who dies with his head blown half off before Eugene can even lay hands on him. On his knees in the bloody snow, deaf from the shells booming overhead, still reaching for the twisted body, Eugene feels it start to come over him again: that yawning black. He makes a point of knowing all the replacement’s names, so he can talk while he tends them. Say, “Hey, you’re alright, Neill,” and, “Ain’t that bad, Carillo,” or, “It’s alright, Melo, your mama’s comin’, she’s comin’.” But it doesn’t do him any good to know fuck all if the boy’s dead before he hits the ground. 

The train wreck of the shells coming in, the tremendous heat, the slaps of air like a giant bellows, splitting his skull. He puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear through them, that distant bawl: “ _Medic_!” He gets up. He leaves Shindell dead in the snow.

After, when the Germans are tired of firing blind and getting lucky, he crouches as far back from the line as he can conscience and washes his hands in an upturned helmet. He found it discarded days ago, dropped and forgotten on the way to an evac jeep. There’s barely any soap left in his sanitation kit and the water’s cold. He scrubs at his cuticles with a stick, scratching off the blood. 

Behind him, a crunch of snow under boots. “Hey,” someone says.

Eugene looks over his shoulder. “Heffron.”

“You okay?” Babe looks like something out of a fairytale, a grim nightwalker hungry for flesh, gaunt and pale, sockets sunken. Weaving through the trees at dusk sniffing for dead. Eugene shuts his eyes until the thought goes away. He knows he can’t look any better. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Just…” He stares at his hands in the pink water. “Trying to clean up.”

Heffron crouches next to him. It’s a difficult process in all the layers they wear, always too few until something needs doing. Heffron wrestles open his jacket and digs around inside. He retrieves a sliver of soap, dried yellow. “Here. I just use it for shaving anyway.”

Slowly, Eugene accepts it. “Thanks.” He dips the soap in the helmet to rejuvenate it. The water’s so cold his knuckles ache. “You not gonna shave no more?” 

Babe makes a flat little braying sound, the same one Guarnere makes at jokes that ain’t funny. Sometimes Eugene hears them cackling together and can’t tell their laughs apart. “Nah,” Babe says. “What’s the point.”

It doesn’t sound like a question, but Eugene answers anyway. “Regulation.” 

“Regulation can kiss my ass.” Heffron swings his rifle up across his thighs, settling with his elbows draped over it. “Besides, broke my mirror the other day, can’t see a fuckin’ thing.”

Eugene pries at the hard soap until it cracks, then starts to lather it between his palms. He knows what Babe is doing, because it’s the same thing he does for hurting men in need of distraction. Only thing is, he’s not hurt. “I’m alright,” he says, skipping about ten steps of the whole awkward waltz. “I’m not crackin’ up.”

Heffron eyeballs him. “Did I say you were?”

Eugene doesn’t answer. He scrubs his fingernails into the opposite palm until the lather turns red. He’s bloody up to the wrists. It’s going to take a while. 

Heffron sits quiet beside him until he’s done. 

~*~

There’s fresh coffee, somehow. Eugene thought they’d seen the last of it after Bastogne got blown to hell, but he can smell it. He follows his nose like a bloodhound, drifting in a tightening spiral until he finds Lieutenant Dike kneeling next to a dandy little flame, swirling a battered pot overtop it. Eugene swallows a soft twist of disappointment. Of all the officers, he doesn’t think Dike likely to share. But worse than that: the memory of Lieutenant Welsh screaming with his thigh laid open, Captain Winters shouting for Eugene over the bloody mess. 

“Sir…” says Eugene, then hesitates. 

“Doc?” Dike squints up at him. 

Eugene nods at the flame, hands tucked in his pockets. “Pardon me sayin’ so, but are fires… okay?”

Dike regards him like Eugene is a weird sort of talking bird. “Okay?”

“Safe.” Eugene tips his head toward the front line, barely thirty yards off. “For light discipline.”

“Ah.” Dike sits back on his heels. “Well, yes. Of course. It’s broad daylight, isn’t it?” He raises an open palm to the sky, like maybe Eugene hadn’t noticed. 

Eugene breathes in the coffee. “Yes, sir,” he says. His head swims with it. He backs up and shuffles down the line until he finds Luz and Perconte huddled together in a depression so deep and narrow it looks like they were trying to tunnel to freedom. 

“Do I smell coffee?” Luz demands, sitting upright. 

“Yeah.” Eugene sniffs, trying to keep the scent warm and alive in his nose. “Lieutenant Dike.”

“Oh.” Luz collapses back into the hole. “Fuckin’ figures.”

“Even Winters don’t have coffee,” Perconte grumbles, sunk so far in his scarf and helmet all Eugene can see are the dark hollows of his eyes. “And he’s got Captain Nixon looking after him.”

Luz snorts. “How Winters don’t have a monogrammed tank and a personal catering service at this point is beyond me.”

Eugene makes a habit of not engaging in camp politics, but even he didn’t, he wouldn’t touch that one with a ten foot pole. Besides, Luz’s tone is nothing short of rapturous. Eugene nods his goodbyes before they can ask him any more questions. He goes down the line, checking on anyone with their head above ground. A complaint of sore feet here (“Dry ‘em off while you’re sittin’ still, you know better.”), an infected flesh wound there (“Come find me when you’re done chow, I’ll scour it out. Yeah, scour. That’s the word.”), then Heffron sticks his head up from behind a canvas and says, “Doc, I got a real problem here.” Eugene clambers straight over the edge of the foxhole after him. Inside, where he’s expecting cold and dark, it’s bright and warm. He stalls, half slid down the slope, staring. Babe grins at him across a little tin can fire. Next to him, Spina is grinning too. Eugene thinks he might faint. “Is that coffee?” he hisses. His eyes are glued to the kidney cup steaming away atop the flame. 

Heffron nods. His face is pink, flushed in a way that doesn’t put the usual cramp in Eugene’s belly. “I, uh, requisitioned it.” 

Eugene slides the rest of the way to the ground, then regains his senses and reaches up to flip open a corner of the tarp. 

“Hey, you’ll let the heat out,” Spina protests.

“You’ll suffocate your fool asses in here with a fire and no air.” There isn’t much room on the floor of the hole, but Eugene wedges himself in. He shakes out his numb hands and holds them near the flame, watching Babe carefully feed it a couple twigs. “Requisitioned, huh?”

Babe eyes are bright under the rim of his helmet. “That’s what they call it, ain’t it? When you’re in the Army and you take something that don’t belong to you?”

Spina laughs. “That’s what Lieutenant Hart told me in boot when he took my bag of jelly beans.”

“Ah, he was just tryna save you from a lifetime on the hips, Spina.” Heffron jabs Spina with an elbow, aiming for what might be his stomach beneath all the layers. Spina grunts, returning it. They grin at each other, jostling, giddy as kids with their contraband. 

There is a sort of softness to Spina, Eugene supposes, eyeing him. A comfortable, well-fed strength to his cheeks and shoulders. He always glows with eagerness, with good humour, no matter what kind of shit they wade through. He bitches and moans with the best of them, sure, but he’s friendly about it. He sits with the guys, he shares tall tales, he laughs at jokes. He dilutes their shared misery like a burden lightened by many hands. It’s no wonder Babe likes him. Eugene drops his eyes to the coffee. It looks about ready to him, bubbling busily. 

Heffron must think the same thing, because he leans forward to peer into the cup and announces, hushed with glee, “I think we’re in business, fellas.” 

It’s too hot to drink at first, although Heffron tries, burning his tongue and cursing. 

“Give it here,” says Eugene. He takes the cup and reaches up through the open tarp to wedge it in the snowbank outside. 

“Everyone, Germans included, are gonna smell that and come running,” Spina protests. 

“Nah.” Eugene wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. If anything, the warmth of the foxhole is making it run even more. “Dike’s got his upwind.” 

They sit quietly, waiting. Heffron unwinds a loop of the scarf around his neck, digging it out of his jacket collar. He looks nearly rosy underneath, helmet tipped back to expose the greasy curls of hair stuck to his forehead, firelight dancing through the bristly patches of pale beard coming in on his upper lip and jaw. He flexes an upheld fist. “Hey, I think I can feel my fingers again.”

“Careful, Babe,” Spina intones, “that’s how it gets you. The hope.”

“How’s your hand?” Eugene asks. 

Babe shrugs. “Eh, fine.”

Eugene frowns. He sits forward. “Lemme see.” 

Heffron grumbles, but pulls off his glove. His hand is bare beneath. Eugene wonders what he did with the bandage - if it was discarded, bloody and worn, in the forest somewhere, or if Heffron stuffed it in a pocket and forgot about it. He doesn’t ask. He can’t bear to know. Heffron extends his hand across the little fire for Eugene to take in both of his. Eugene turns it this way and that, squinting in the soft light. “Don’t look infected.” He presses his thumb to the curved edge of the scab on the heel of Heffron’s palm. 

“Ow,” says Heffron.

Eugene looks up. “That hurt?”

“Naw, Gene, felt great.”

Eugene stares at him, recognizing his own words from days ago. Babe’s mouth curls at the corner. Eugene’s stomach rolls along with it. “Alright,” he says. His pulse throbs in time to the waver of firelight across Babe’s cheekbones. “I guess you’re fine.”

Babe leans back and stuffs his glove on. “That’s what my ma always tells me.”

Eugene turns around to check on the coffee. He didn’t think he’d ever again resent any part of himself being warm, but he pauses for a second with his head outside the tarp, letting his face cool. He touches the side of the cup with the backs of his fingers and finds it bearable. He brings it in. They pass it around, cradling it between their cold hands, savouring the steam and smell and heat as much as the taste. When it’s finished, parceled out in bitter sips, Eugene lets out a slow breath. He rubs his lips. “I gotta go,” he says. “Told Alley I’d help him out.”

“Need a hand?” asks Spina. 

Eugene clambers to his knees. “Nah.” He pulls open the tarp and hauls himself out onto the bank, then ducks his head under again. “Thanks for the coffee, Heffron.”

Babe nods, saluting him with the empty cup. “Any time.”

Eugene secures the tarp with a little open space for a chimney and gets to his feet. It’s becoming evening, the hazy, snow-softened sky darkening to a sullen blue through the trees. The fog has been meandering in and out for days, putting another stranglehold on supply drops. He looks down the length of the line, the staggered humps here and there indicating where a pair or trio of men have dug in with canvas and branches their only protection, dirt and snow. He looks at the vulnerable mound of Babe’s foxhole. For a second, he imagines dragging every fallen tree in the forest overtop it, walling it around with concrete and sandbags, digging a moat. Standing over it with a machine gun, a mortar squad, a howitzer. 

He shuts his eyes. It’s not a yawning black behind them, this time, but a dark, trembling red.

~*~

“- which is when he realizes he’s been spelling his own fucking name wrong his whole damn life!” Guarnere finishes.

The men around him hoot with laughter, Martin slapping his knee. 

“That ain’t fair,” says Shifty over the racket, shaking his head. “I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to spell most of those Greek names, they’re such a puzzle, and they don’t even come from English letters, do they?”

“There’s a right way to spell your own goddamn name, Shift,” Guarnere says, shoveling a spoonful of soup into his mouth and speaking around it. “Whatever way your ancestors been doing it since -” He waves his spoon. “I don’t know, since us Romans took over the world with the proper alphabet, I guess.”

There’s a collective ruckus at that, laughs and _Hey nows_. Eugene, propped against a tree to one side, looks down into his kidney cup to keep his smile secret. It’s not a very appetizing sight, the thin soup flecked here and there with the shriveled remains of dehydrated vegetables, but it’s better than the broth with no vegetables they were eating two weeks ago. He thinks of the thick flavorful stews his aunties will have bubbling on the stove back home right now, eye-watering with spice, salty with fish. His mouth floods miserably. He spoons in another helping of soup to keep it busy.

“Doc,” says Babe, clattering up next to him. 

Eugene glances sideways. “Heffron.”

With a grunt, Babe sits down beside him. He leans against the tree, shoulder pushed up to Eugene’s. “Hell of a day, huh?”

The shelling had been apocalyptic that morning, starting at first light and continuing until well after the sun cleared the horizon. Too far east at first, then swinging down directly upon them, then veering south. Eugene isn’t sure if the Germans didn’t know where they were, or if they knew too well that Fox was on Easy’s left flank and intended to hit both companies in one pass. Eugene doesn’t know how Fox fared, but by some miracle he only tended two wounded himself, both too minor to require evac. Shaken and deafened as they were, the men seemed to take heart from the lack of casualties, jovial like they’d finally appeased some moody demon of luck. Eugene heard them joking amongst themselves almost the moment the last shell landed. He’d been crouched, one arm over his head to hold his helmet on, in a foxhole with Talbert. He’d wanted to lie flat, to spread himself thin across the entire ground, to dissolve into mist, to be blown away through the trees with the smoke of the artillery. He had flinched at that first distant raising of a voice in jest - too much, in that moment, like the scream of a dying man. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Hell of a day.” 

Another peal of laughter from the men, the joke lost to Eugene’s inattention. He takes another mouthful of broth. From nowhere, without comment, Heffron holds out a ragged piece of bread. It’s almost double the size of the ration Eugene received with his soup. Eugene stares at it. “Where’d you get that?”

“A little birdie dropped it.” When Eugene doesn’t move to take it, Heffron tucks it into the crook of his hand. “Eat up.”

“I don’t...” Eugene touches the hard edge of the crust. It’s dark bread, a bit stale, the last of the supply dropped on Bastogne. He tries to hand it back. “You should eat it.”

Babe shakes his head. “I had enough.”

It’s not quite embarrassment curdling Eugene’s belly - he isn’t too proud for charity, which this is. He swallows the tasteless film of spit and soup on the back of his tongue. Babe watches him, bundled up tight to the chin, his pale face punctuated by a pink nose and the glimmer of his translucent eyelashes like a spray of frost. There’s an attentiveness to him that Eugene can’t quite meet head on. His stomach snarls. He lifts the bread to his mouth. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Eh.” Heffron shrugs, a dismissal and an acknowledgement at once. “You’re such a skinny little fuck.”

Eugene isn’t, at least no more than Babe, and they both know it. They all went through the same years of physical training, the same sweating and running and fighting. They can endure what they have to. But, says the pinch of Babe’s brows, the tucked corner of his lips as he watches Eugene eat, maybe they shouldn’t have to. Eugene doesn’t have it in him to disagree. He eats the bread and finishes his soup and listens to Easy Company laugh. 

~*~

Two days later, while Eugene is rewrapping the bandage around Penkala’s wrist, Hashey and Garcia stumble by, giggling. 

“Hey, Doc,” says Garcia, “better go check on Babe when you got a sec, he’s hurt bad.”

Hashey nods. “Yeah, might not recover from this one.” He doesn’t have a scarf like some of the boys, and his scrawny neck stands out painfully bare above the collar of his coat. He looks nearly blue, but he’s smiling as wide as Garcia. 

Eugene stares at them, hands frozen with Penkala’s bandage taut between them. “What happened?”

“Ah, nothing all growing boys don’t go through,” Garcia says. He and Hashey share another laugh as they carry on together through the snow.

Eugene is halfway to his feet before Penkala says, “Ow - Doc!”

Eugene quickly crouches back down. “Sorry, sorry.” He finishes winding the bandage. “It’s healing real nice, Penkala, right as rain.”

“Great, thanks.” Penkala frowns. “What’s all that about Babe?”

“I dunno.” Eugene yanks the knot tight on the gauze. “I’ll go find out.”

He retraces Hashey and Garcia’s footprints through last night’s fresh snow until he spots a hunched figure next to a fallen tree. As he gets closer, Eugene hears a muttered stream of curses rising in intensity and volume until he’s sure it’s Babe. He climbs over the log, already reaching to open his satchel. 

“Heffron.”

Babe jumps, then yelps, “Ah, goddamnit, ouch!” and throws his razor on the ground. 

Eugene regards it, then Babe, who’s lathered from his collarbones to the bridge of his nose in soap, one side of his face half-shaven, bleeding in three different places. “What happened?” Eugene asks.

Heffron pulls an incredulous expression, gesturing to his face, then the razor on the ground, then the tin of soapy water balanced on his lap. “What’s it fuckin’ look like, Doc?”

Eugene sinks to his haunches. “Regulation caught up with you, huh?”

Heffron nods, scowling. “Lieutenant Dike ripped me a new asshole. But I ain’t got a fucking mirror no more, like I said.”

Eugene leans in, squinting at the rivers of soapy blood winding down Heffron’s neck. “You ain’t got half your throat left neither, from the look of it.”

“Well, I can’t goddamn see. And my fingers are so numb, might as well be shaving with a mallet.”

Eugene doesn’t smile. He chews the inside of his cheek instead and hopes it looks contemplative. “You’re makin’ a real mess.”

“Yeah, thanks.” With a mutter, Heffron picks up the razor again. “Garcia and Hash send you this way?”

Eugene nods. 

“Coupl’a wise guys.” Heffron tips his head back. With a grimace like he’s about to charge the German line single-handed, he sets the blade against his Adam’s apple. Eugene watches him draw it up toward his chin in a hesitant stroke, the tendons of his neck standing out as if ready to flee. It makes all the hair on Eugene’s body rise. 

“Here,” says Eugene, before he can think. He settles on his knees and holds out a hand. “Lemme do it.”

Babe stops with the razor poised at the edge of his jaw. He squints suspiciously. “You serious?”

Deadly, Eugene thinks. “Yeah,” he says. He makes a little coaxing motion. “Come on, I won’t cut you.”

Babe lowers the razor. He shrugs. “Okay. If you want, I guess.”

Eugene takes the razor. The handle is cold, even though Heffron’s been holding it in an ungloved hand. He moves closer, so his knees touch Heffron’s, and leans in. “Look up,” he says.

He’s careful with the length of Babe’s throat, skipping the already bleeding places, turning the blade sideways to get around the sharp shape of Babe’s Adam’s apple. The soap is so thin, even when he lathers it up with the brush in the tin, that he can see every hair through it. He winces at the rashy places burned by the old blade. “You never done this before, or what?”

“Give it a rest,” Heffron mumbles, voice pinched from trying not to move his lips or his throat. “Have you?”

Eugene guesses he doesn’t mean on himself. “Used to shave my older brother when I was a kid, yeah.” 

“Why didn’t he do it himself?”

Edge of the jaw now, the tender little corner under Heffron’s ear. “Rickets. Can’t hold things real good.” 

“Oh.” 

Eugene touches the side of Heffron’s cheek to turn his face. He watches Heffron stare into the forest, blinking. He runs the razor up the sloping curve of Heffron’s cheekbone, leaving it smooth and pink. 

“I had a little sister who died,” Heffron says at last, when Eugene is about to turn him to the other side. “Whooping cough, when she was a baby.” 

Eugene frowns, nodding. It’s hardly a new tale. Most people he knows back home have lost at least one child to fever, to cough, to something mysterious sweeping in silently overnight, leaving absence in its wake. Microscopic odds. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Babe shrugs. “I don’t really remember, I was three. I guess there's a shot they give you for it, now.”

Eugene nudges the side of Babe’s jaw with his knuckles. He turns obediently. 

“Did my ma in, though,” Babe says. “She weren’t quite right for a while. You know.”

Eugene nods again. He thinks of all the women with babies buried in church graveyards, kids with dead siblings, dead playmates. A suffering as old as humanity, as natural as anything. He thinks of what the human heart is equipped to handle, and what the human hand is equipped to deal. Quietly, he works through Babe’s second cheekbone, then takes his chin to face him front. Their eyes meet. Eugene’s thumb is tucked beneath the curve of Babe’s bottom lip. There’s soap on Babe’s upper lip. Eugene breathes out real slow. For a second, he can’t make his hands work. Everything in his chest has cinched up tight around his lungs like a vise. He looks at Babe looking at him and can’t remember what he was about to do. 

It goes on too long. 

“Doc,” says Babe, soft as cotton.

Eugene shuts his eyes and gives himself a shake. “Sorry,” he whispers. He clears his throat. When he opens his eyes, Babe isn’t smiling. He’s staring back at Eugene with wide eyes. When he draws a breath, his chest hitches. Eugene hesitates, waiting to see what he’ll say, but he doesn’t say anything. He sits still. Eugene lifts the razor and shaves off the prickly mustache struggling so valiantly to grow. He curves the razor around the corner of Babe’s mouth and gently smooths out the divot above his chin. He keeps his eyes there, stern with himself like holding back the rising tide of a screaming meemie, until he feels something brush his knee. At first, he doesn’t dare look. He can’t. His heart is hammering so hard, if he looks down he might slide sideways into the snow and not get up again. And then he doesn’t need to look, because he can tell what it is: the tips of Babe’s fingers, tracing the round of his kneecap through his dungarees. 

Eugene shuts his eyes again. He squeezes the razor in his trembling hand. He only has a few seconds to figure this out. Only a few seconds before waiting too long will decide it for him, one way or the other. 

“Hey, Doc!” 

Eugene lurches back at the same moment Heffron does. The can of water between them spins off, dumping into the snow. Eugene gets tangled in the strap of his satchel in the process of scrambling to his feet. 

“Doc?” It’s Muck, floundering through the snow toward them. 

Eugene looks down at Heffron, still on his knees, back pressed to the log. He’s staring up at Eugene, big-eyed. There’s a single smear of soap on his chin. 

“Yeah,” Eugene calls. He can’t tear his eyes off Babe. His left knee feels weak with pins and needles, the fiery imprint of where Babe touched him. He wants to put his hand over it, cradle it, check it for visible signs of gentleness. “Yeah, Muck, hold on.”

He clambers over the log and hurries toward Muck. Away from Babe, away from the swollen hammering of blood in his own veins. 

~*~

At chow that night, when Babe unwinds his scarf, Eugene notices the scabs on his throat. Immediately, in counterpoint to the paralyzing grip of nerves he’s been enduring all day, hot guilt rolls through him. He’d meant, earlier, to clean them up, pat them dry, touch them with sulfa. Instead, he’s spent the day as far from Babe as possible, busy with nothing, thinking only of himself. He feels heavy beneath the weight of this realization, crushed by a landslide he’d seen coming and done nothing to escape. It’s only a small thing in the grand scheme, he knows, but the implication strikes him like a lightning bolt aimed from on high. He'd forgotten to do his job. He lingers on the far side of the foxhole the men are clustered around, watching Heffron eat and chatter with Guarnere and not look at Eugene even once. 

“Doc,” says Winters, coming up to Eugene’s elbow.

Eugene starts. He wants to leap to attention like an embarrassed child caught mid-theft, but catches himself. “Sir.”

“How are you fixed?”

Eugene is helplessly blank for a long second before his wheels start spinning. “Low, sir. Got a few hits of morphine, a dozen bandages, a couple units of plasma.”

Winters nods. He looks as miserable as it’s possible for a man to look while desperately trying not to. Eugene doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone take so poorly to the cold as Captain Winters. 

“Good. We’ll likely be dug in a while yet, so do your best to make them last.”

“Will do, sir.” None of it needs saying, but Eugene appreciates the effort nonetheless. There’s never a doubt in his mind that Winters is paying attention. 

As Eugene looks away from Winters, huddling deeper into his jacket, he catches Heffron’s eye across the foxhole. Guarnere is talking away, waving his spoon, but Heffron is looking straight at Eugene. It only lasts a second before Heffron drops his eyes. 

Eugene grits his teeth. “Excuse me, sir,” he says to Winters. He heads around the foxhole.

Heffron watches him coming, nothing showing on his face. Eugene wants to shrivel beneath the blankness of that gaze. It feels like shuffling, shamefaced, before a teacher for the strap. He forces his voice to be firm when he says, “Did you clean out those cuts?”

Babe blinks. “Huh?”

Eugene points with his chin. “Your neck. I forgot, earlier. Did you wash ‘em out?”

Guarnere snickers. “Yeah, Babe, did you take care of your owies?”

Babe rolls his eyes in Guarnere’s direction. “Give it a rest, Bill.” To Eugene, he says, “Uh, no. They ain’t deep or nothin’, didn’t think it was worth the bother.”

“That’s what they all say, then your head rots off,” Guarnere sing-songs, scraping the bottom of his cup. 

“He’s right,” says Eugene. “More or less.”

Babe pulls a face. “Alright, alright, whatever you say, Doc. You’re the expert.” 

Eugene can’t tell if the edge of irritation in Babe’s voice is directed at him or Guarnere. He feels his nascent resolve, the tiny flickering flame of it, gutter even more. He swallows. “Come see me later, if you want ‘em fixed up, okay?” 

Heffron is silent a moment, working his tongue around his mouth. It’s getting too dark to tell exactly what expression he’s wearing, the minute details of it that could spell out for Eugene if he’s making a mistake. 

“Yeah,” Heffron says. “Maybe I will.”

Eugene nods. “Okay,” he says. “Good. I’ll see you later.” He flees back to the other side of the foxhole. 

~*~

He waits, without waiting. He orbits the foxhole until everyone’s cleared off for the evening, and then he does his nightly inventory, and then he makes his rounds. Checking that Liebgott and Randleman in the OP have an extra blanket, that Toye is keeping his feet dry, that the newest replacement, Whitton, isn’t eating snow again, that Sisk’s bandages are changed. He knows, from watching the pattern of men dispersing to their posts after chow, that Babe is bunking down with Christenson tonight. He sees their foxhole through the trees, on the far end of the line. He almost heads for it, fingers fidgeting in his satchel at his packet of iodine swabs, but doesn’t. The cuts aren’t deep, like Babe said. If he wants them seen to, he knows where Eugene sleeps. 

This is what Eugene tells himself as he turns back for his own foxhole, to excuse himself for being a coward. He clambers into the frozen, lonely hole and wraps up tight in his rank smelling blanket. He waits for a long time, but Babe never comes to find him.

~*~

If Eugene thought the shelling was cataclysmic before, he doesn’t know what to call it the morning Toye and Guarnere are hit. 

It takes him too long to get to them. Not because he freezes, not because his body shuts down when it needs to react, but because his head is ringing so loud he can’t hear Lieutenant Compton screaming for him. It takes Wynn hitting his shoulder and pointing urgently, mouth moving in a silent shout, for Eugene to understand. By the time he gets to them, slipping through the snow, tumbling over smoking logs and around smouldering craters, he can mostly hear again. His eyes are making enough sense that he recognises Toye immediately, already struggling to sit up despite Compton trying to hold him down, and Guarnere a second later. Guarnere isn’t moving. Eugene skids to his knees next to them, already tearing open his satchel. 

Guarnere wakes in the process of Eugene tourniqueting his thigh. He rolls his head against the ground, making an insensate, miserable sound like a child awakening hungry from a sweaty nap. 

“Hold still,” says Eugene, his hands moving fast. “I gotcha, I gotcha.”

“Hey, Doc,” Guarnere slurs. He lifts his head to see what Eugene’s doing. “Ah, shit.”

The only good thing about being shelled in a forest is that there’s no shortage of sticks. Eugene grabs the nearest one to twist into the tourniquet. 

“Is that my scarf?” Guarnere mumbles. He’s trying to push up on his elbows.

“Hold still!” Eugene snaps. “Yeah, it is.”

“I guess I won’t be needin’ it…”

Behind him, Eugene can hear Compton talking to Toye, a stuttering hysterical babble Eugene knows must be doing more harm than good. He’s relieved when Luz pelts through the trees, helmetless, to find out if they need a jeep. 

“On the fuckin’ double,” Eugene says, tucking the ends of the scarf and standing. Luz has stopped, his sentence trailing off, standing like a wax statue cast mid-motion. He’s staring at the wash of blood in the snow, his two friends mangled in the center like deer who crossed a highway without looking both ways. Eugene shakes him by the shoulder. “Hey, the jeep.” And because, if nothing snaps a man out of a stupor like a job to do, then two jobs must be even better, “Get Buck outta here, would’ya.” 

Luz obeys, drawing Compton up and coaxing him away. Eugene doesn’t watch to see where they go or how Compton takes it - he has eyes only for the raw meat of Toye’s shattered leg. 

“You hit anywhere else?” he asks as he crouches, already patting down Toye’s chest and sides, rolling him at the shoulders to check his back for blood.

“I don’t - I don’t think so,” Toye stammers. “Is this not enough?”

Despite himself, Eugene almost smiles. “It’s sure as hell enough,” he says.

Malarkey arrives, a welcome set of extra hands, and not long after that, the runners from the aid station. Eugene finishes wrapping Toye’s stump as best he can, tying it off tight as Guarnere’s. The artery wasn’t cut, but he can’t guess how. When the runners come back for Toye, Eugene pats his arm as they lift his stretcher. “You’ll make it, Joe,” he says, with a confidence he almost feels. 

When they’re gone, all Eugene wants to do is sink back to his knees and rest his eyes, flatten his palms against his own whole two thighs until he can be sure they’ll hold him. But he heard shouts for a medic a few minutes ago, and he needs to make sure Spina got to it. 

He’s halfway through the scattered Company, checking each foxhole and man he sees, when he finds Babe sitting on the branch of an enormous fallen tree, one glove dangling between his teeth. He’s holding up his bare hand to inspect the bloody piece of wood sticking out of it.

“Jesus, Heffron,” Eugene says, doubling back. He drops to a crouch. He hasn’t spoken to Babe since yesterday, but now isn't the time to coddle the hesitation he had begun to fear was growing, mold-like, between them. He grabs Babe’s wrist, turning it to look at the splinter. “This hand, too?”

Babe spits out his glove. “Ouch, Eugene, fuck!” he yelps.

Eugene absently says, “Sorry,” peering close. The stick juts from the heel of Babe’s palm, close to the wrist, and although it's deep enough to be ugly, it's gone in at a shallow angle. “Move your thumb.”

Babe does. 

“That hurt?”

“No.”

Eugene touches his pointer finger. “This one?” 

“Nah.”

“Okay,” Eugene says. “Grit your teeth.”

Babe groans when Eugene draws the stick free. It comes out pretty easy, all things considered. Blood immediately starts dripping. Eugene turns Babe’s hand palm-down to let it run. “Gets the shit outta there,” he explains, when Babe makes an incredulous noise. 

“Some of that shit is my blood!”

For the second time in one of the more terrible hours Eugene’s lived lately, he almost smiles. He pulls a cotton pad from his pocket and presses it over the wound, holding pressure, and glances up surreptitiously to see just how pursed Babe’s mouth is. He sees Babe’s face covered in scratches. “Shit,” Eugene says, popping up on his heels for a closer look. “What happened?”

At first, Babe doesn’t answer. He stares at Eugene with his brows tucked together, eyes darting back and forth. Eugene’s peering at the dirty, bloody marks all over his cheeks and chin, but then their gazes catch. It’s as overwhelming a moment as Eugene had been dreading. As he’d been hoping. They’re very close. Close as they’d been before, when Eugene had drawn the razor gently along Babe’s jaw and leaned against his knees. Only, this time, he’s holding Babe’s hand in both of his, and neither of them can escape in a hurry. The air between them fogs with their breath, drifting back and forth. 

“A tree fell on me,” Babe says finally.

“A tree fell on you,” Eugene repeats.

Babe nods. He reaches back with his gloved hand and pats the log he’s leaned against. “My foxhole’s under this son of a bitch.”

Eugene’s chest goes cold. It shocks him into holding his breath. He looks at the line of the trunk, getting his bearings, and realises Babe’s right. Now he knows it’s there, he can see the indent of the foxhole beneath the sprawl of branches. “Holy shit,” he says, finally exhaling. “You almost got hit.” It’s not something he would normally say to a man in his care, especially not in that blurting tone of dismay. 

Babe nods. “Near fuckin’ thing. Came down right on me.”

Eugene stares up at him again, but Babe has dropped his eyes to where Eugene still holds his hand. Right, his hand. Eugene flips it back over. The bleeding has slowed. He takes a bandage and a sulfa packet from his satchel and makes quick work. As he’s tying off the ends of the dressing, Babe asks softly, “Who else got hit?”

Eugene’s stomach sinks. It was already in knots, but now it descends to his toes. He buys a little time by fiddling with the tails of the bandage, pushing them into Babe’s bloody sleeve. “Uh, Toye,” he says at last. “And Guarnere.”

Babe draws a sharp breath. It’s not just a breath; there’s a sharp catch to it, like a little swallowed cry. He didn’t make that noise even when Eugene pulled the stick out of him.

“It’s okay -” Eugene begins, then starts again, because it sure ain’t okay. “They’re both alive. Lost their legs.”

“What, both of ‘em!” Babe cries.

Eugene frowns. “Er. One apiece, that’s all.”

Babe stares at him, mouth agape. “Gene, are you tryna be funny?”

“No?”

“So help me God -”

“I’m not! They each lost a leg!” 

Babe scowls. He’s a godawful mess, all torn up like that, but Eugene’s miserable stomach begins to curl with grateful, desperate heat at the sight of it, of Babe Heffron glowering at him through nothing but superficial injuries. It’s a balm he didn’t know existed, a mercy he couldn’t have imagined he’d require. All at once, like a man lost at sea taking heart in the sunrise even if it brings no rescue, Eugene feels his spirits lift.

“Lemme see to your face,” says Eugene, softer. He lets go of Babe’s hand to fish out the iodine swabs. 

“It ain’t that bad, don’t you have nothin’ better to do?” Babe grumbles, but he sits still for Eugene to tip his helmet back and wipe off the scratches. None are deep, except one swoop torn raw beside his left eye. Even the little cuts on his throat are nicely scabbed. 

Eugene shakes his head, using the end of the swab to dig out bits of bark. “Fuckin’ lucky,” he mutters. “Coulda taken your eye out, Heffron.”

Babe’s wincing, head tipped sideways, but he still manages to roll his eyes at Eugene. “Yeah, thanks, Roe.” 

There’s an edge to the way he says Eugene’s name. Eugene knows what it means. He mulls it around his mouth for a minute while he works. “Babe,” he says finally, almost under his breath. He’s said it before, but it feels different now. Maybe it’s how he’s more or less between Babe’s thighs, steadied against his shoulder, their faces inches apart. Maybe it’s how he can tell Babe’s silently teetering on the precipice of rage and despair about Guarnere, or maybe it’s because Eugene’s belly is still doing flips. 

“Yeah?” says Babe. And then - when Eugene doesn’t answer - again, quieter. “Yeah.”

When the nastiest scrape is scrubbed clean, Eugene puts an adhesive patch over it. He’s done, but he doesn’t move away. He turns Babe’s head back and forth with two fingers on his chin, checking his work. It’s another reflection of the day before: his thumb on Babe’s chin, their bodies too close together. Too close isn’t a concept that’s occurred much to Eugene for the past couple years, not since modesty and shame and the concept of personal space were so methodically stripped from him by the army. Not since he’s gotten wrist-deep in the viscera of too many men to count, seen the peckers of every fella in Easy - usually not under particularly flattering circumstances - slept on top of and under and beside boys too cold and scared to care where hands or asses or crotches went. Before a few days ago, Babe had not been a particular exception to this rule of indifference. Now…

Now, Eugene holds Babe’s chin in his fingers, exactly as he would examine any other soldier, and feels the hungry elation of a new secret unfold in his chest. A breathtaking thing, like a tender sprout - precious, and his alone to protect. “Okay,” Eugene says, quietly. “You’re all done.”

~*~

Everyone is grim for the rest of the day, to varying degrees of silence and irritability, but Compton is the worst. He sits huddled on himself at the base of a tree, staring six miles deep into the earth. The men cluster around him like a pack of protective dogs, Malarkey and Luz especially. They feed him precious cigarettes and soup and butt shoulders with him, but nothing brings him back around. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t talk. Eugene watches him, the untethered way his gaze drifts, and knows he’s not long for the front. One way or another, Buck Compton will be leaving soon.

Eugene does his rounds after chow, sniffing under bandages, prescribing water, touching his wrist to foreheads. The food was even worse than usual tonight, a watery gruel tinged faintly with the memory of chicken, but Eugene had swallowed it quickly, grateful for the warmth. It’s the only thing keeping him upright through his exhaustion, giving him the strength to squat patiently and listen to Perconte worry about the rash on his neck. It’s just nerves, these moods, Eugene knows, watching Perconte’s big eyes in the moonlight, his waving hands. Nerves and grief and confusion of the most spiritual sort. Eugene listens, nodding, and tells him not to bug it, it’ll go away. He’s not entirely certain that’s true, but there’s nothing else he can do. 

When he spirals back to the foxhole by the CP, there are only a handful of men left. Compton is gone, Eugene guesses led away to share a pit with as many fellas as will fit. He nods at Spina, who’s been making his own rounds, and turns around to head for bed. 

The forest is bright only in patches as clouds drift past the fat moon. It makes Eugene’s skin crawl. If he looks the right way and squints a bit, he can almost see where the German line is across the field. It’s bright enough, when he reaches his hole, to see that it’s already occupied. He slows, drawing his hands from his pockets. The man’s back is to him, shoulders up, helmet wedged down, but Eugene knows who it is. 

“Babe,” he says.

Babe turns to peer at him. “Doc.” A cloud begins to wander across the moon. Eugene watches the pale wedge of Babe’s face disappear slowly into shadow. “Mind if I bunk in with you tonight?”

Eugene’s heart begins to hammer. It’s a strangely polite question under the circumstances - or perhaps not so strangely. Decisions about who sleeps where are always carried out with either silent assumption or ribald jostling, as far as Eugene’s observed. Men have their entities, little units that function as a whole, friends they’ve moved in lockstep with for years. Luz and Perconte are one such unit, Muck and Penkala and Malarkey another. Winters and Nixon. Randleman and Martin. Babe and Guarnere. When those entities are broken by fate or practicality, borders shift. There are unspoken rules to it Eugene can’t help but understand. He knows Babe is playing by those rules.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course.”

He slides down the bank of the foxhole. Babe is already tucked beneath a blanket, the edge drawn up under his armpits, his rifle propped nearby. Silently, he passes Eugene the damp square of a folded blanket. There isn’t enough room for two men to lie down without being mostly on top of each other; Eugene’s been sleeping alone the past week, or with Spina farther back on the line. He wraps the blanket around his shoulders and settles on his rear next to Babe. He suspects sleep is about the last thing on Babe’s mind, anyway. They’re quiet for a while. Eugene watches the moon come and go. Babe sits very still, until he begins to fidget. Just a bit, at first, his fingers drawing along the hem of the blanket. Then sniffing. Shifting. Scratching his chin. Coughing softly. His knee, finally, comes to port against Eugene’s and stays there. The rest of him wiggles some more, as though hoping by distraction to play innocent. Eugene lets him squirm, not moving. He can hardly breathe. There are only blankets and dungarees between them. Nothing, and everything. 

“Was he -” Babe says at last, then, “Ah,” a noise of despairing renunciation.

Eugene looks at him. It wasn’t what he’d expected, but maybe it should have been. Babe is staring out at the trees. He isn’t going to say anything else, Eugene realizes. “He was awake,” Eugene says. “They both were. They were hurtin’, but they were with it. Joking with each other, you know how they are.”

Babe nods, fast, jerky. “Yeah. I know.”

“Guarnere said he was gonna beat Toye back home.”

The laugh that comes out of Babe is small and damp. “He always says that.”

Eugene reaches out to put his hand on Babe’s thigh, right above where it’s touching Eugene’s. He does so with no intent but to brace the quavering spine of Babe’s voice. “He’s gonna be okay,” Eugene says. “They’re sending him home. You can go visit when you get back.”

This time, Babe’s laugh is wetter, more cynical than sad. “Yeah, Doc. We’ll see about that, I guess.”

Eugene swallows. It sobers him. These new and unknown waters they’re silently treading aside, the crisis of his thundering heartbeat notwithstanding, they’re all throwing dice against the house, here. Forgetting that would be unforgivable. 

“I just wish I could have said goodbye, you know?” Babe’s hands are twisting around and around each other in his lap. “They’re just gone, and it ain’t like…” 

It ain’t like when someone dies and no one can say goodbye, Eugene thinks. That’s a level of fucked up there’s no explanation for, but it’s a permanent one nonetheless. Sending men off the line for good with no well-wish, joke, or promise to see them soon is a different kind of wound. A open, lonely one, without the closure of a body. Not worse, just different. A reverse death, in a way, where you might be the one not coming back. It strikes Eugene, thinking that, why Babe is here with him now instead of yesterday, when Eugene had so cautiously invited him: some frightening things become more important, worth less hesitance, in the context of mortality. 

Eugene squeezes Babe’s thigh. He moves to withdraw his hand, but Babe reaches after it. In one motion, he takes Eugene’s hand and slumps onto Eugene’s shoulder. Their helmets clack gently together. Eugene’s breath stutters in his throat. His body goes tight with a shiver that is indistinguishable from cold, except that it wells up from within his belly. He is stricken stiff as a rabbit in the shadow of a hawk. He stares unseeing into the forest. 

Eventually, Babe says, “Gene,” quietly, from an enormous distance. 

Eugene wants to answer, but can’t. A horrible, panicked thought occurs to him - that he will sit here, mute and insensible, while Babe continues to be extremely brave, until he has burned all his own bridges behind himself. The shame of it knocks him back to life. He takes a ragged breath, the gasp of a drowning man dragged from a river and slapped awake. He squeezes Babe’s hand.

Babe takes it exactly how Eugene means it - Eugene can tell, because Babe lets out a shuddering little breath of his own and turns his face farther into Eugene’s shoulder. And then he fumbles their hands apart, pulls his glove off, and slides his bare fingers back between Eugene’s. Eugene’s body clenches with another shiver, the kind that ratchets up all his muscles and doesn’t let go. He shuts his eyes, stroking his trembling thumb over Babe’s knuckles. They’re softer than he expected. Finally, by increments, he turns his head until he can feel Babe’s breath on his jaw. For a long moment, neither of them move, pressed tight to each other. Then Eugene dips his chin the single inch it takes to make Babe rise to meet him. 

Their mouths brush. Shut, chapped, cold, barely there. It’s almost too much. Eugene feels Babe’s hand shaking in his. The rush of tenderness, of protective awe, that pours through him is so overwhelming that he opens his mouth to say something about it - maybe just _oh_ \- but Babe parts his lips at the same time and all Eugene understands from then on is the wet warmth of their mouths together. His body knows what to do, even if his mind is hardly capable. He lifts his other hand to cradle the underside of Babe’s jaw, twisting his shoulders against the wall of the foxhole to make their mouths fit better. Their helmets bump, but Babe seems to care even less than Eugene. He pushes close, breath brushing Eugene’s cheek, and it’s his tongue that touches first, tentative at Eugene’s lower lip. Gratefully, Eugene touches it back. Babe’s hand is squeezing his so tight Eugene can’t feel his fingers. 

It’s all the thrilling newness of the first time Eugene kissed anyone, except this time it’s a man, this time they’re in the middle of a war zone, this time they could be dead tomorrow, and this time Eugene has just begun to guess what the shape of love might be. It’s so much, Eugene can only stand it a few seconds. He has to draw back, panting against Babe’s lips. Babe seems to understand, because he holds still and lets Eugene breathe. It’s almost worse this way, more intimate, so close Eugene can’t make his eyes focus on Babe’s face. He tries to say something, but only gets as far as, “I - ” before his teeth chatter and he has to stop.

Very softly, Babe whispers, “Okay?”

Eugene nods. His cold nose brushes Babe’s, which is just as cold. Babe nods back. He tips his head to kiss the corner of Eugene’s closed mouth, then the center of Eugene’s chin, then the other corner of his mouth. He rubs their cheeks together, stubble scratching. He doesn’t say anything, but Eugene feels like they’re trading entire paragraphs with every inch of skin that’s touching. He sighs, swallowing. Shuts his eyes and lets his mouth find the corner of Babe’s in reply, lingering until Babe lets him in again. Better prepared this time for the riot in his stomach, the pounding in his head, Eugene can withstand the touch of their tongues and the press of Babe’s teeth to his bottom lip. Then, withstanding it, to grow a sudden appetite for it, and instantly after that a need. He holds Babe tight with the hand on his jaw, ravenous. Every particle of his body has suddenly understood Babe’s existence and how important it is, how necessary. 

They kiss for years, until their mouths are numb, until Eugene is so overwhelmed and tired he can’t sit upright anymore. He’s not sure if it’s exhaustion, cold, or some kind of fit, but he’s begun shaking and can’t stop. By now, Babe is mostly on top of him, pressing him back into the dirt wall. Their hands are still joined, although looser now. 

“Hey,” Babe murmurs, the first thing either of them has said in a long time. “Are you cold?”

Eugene almost laughs. He almost says, _Of course I am_ , but then he realizes: no, he isn’t. For the first time in weeks, he is alive with heat. Not least between his legs, where he’s hard with a fervency he’d begun to fear permanently lost to this goddamn war. He wonders if Babe is hard, if Babe is as roaring hot as he is. He shakes his head. “No.”

They kiss again, because that’s what their mouths know how to do best now. Eugene doesn’t know if his tongue can even exist alone anymore. 

“We need to sleep,” Babe whispers. He says it mostly into Eugene’s mouth, every movement of his lips met by Eugene’s and returned, swollen, slick with spit. 

“Okay,” Eugene whispers back.

Somehow, they pry themselves apart enough to rearrange the blankets. The motion of it shocks Eugene out of his shaking. They curl up into a single ball together, webbing and boots and limbs tangled, Babe’s head tucked onto Eugene’s chest in such a way that their mouths can still find each other. Eugene’s arm is curled beneath Babe’s back. One of Babe’s thighs is cinched tight overtop his. They settle. 

Eugene stares up at the moon overhead, brimming with wordless, dizzy exhilaration. Babe says something into the hollow of his throat, but he can’t hear it. As he watches, heart pounding, another cloud slides across the moon’s face. The forest goes dark, but Eugene’s eyes are full of light.


End file.
